…and finds himself materializing in the heart of a sun. An execution that goes on forever and ever, for the Guardians have altered their machines so that Beckwith is caught in a time-Möbius. An interlocked time-phase that puts him into the heart of a blazing inferno just long enough to die, then snaps him out to a moment before he died, then puts him back then takes him out, over and over and over and over…

Later, on the Enterprise, alone in his stateroom, Kirk receives a visit from Spock, and between them we see a depth of friendship that explains now how a man of deep feeling could be so close to an alien of cold logic. Kirk is felled by sadness, and Spock seems to understand. For the Captain, there is something irretrievably lost, but Spock makes sense when he says, “No woman was ever loved as much, Jim. Because no woman was ever offered the universe for love.”

And Kirk understands. FADE OUT on the stars once more. The stars, like Kirk’s love, eternal.

May 13, 1966

May 13, 1966

STAR TREK

“The City on the Edge of Forever” 

written by Harlan Ellison

PROLOGUE:

FADE IN establishing shot USS Enterprise, somewhere out near the Rim, hanging suspended above a strange, silvery planet. OVER this shot and subsequent pantomime shots, we HEAR the VOICE of KIRK:

KIRK’S VOICE OVER

Ship’s Log: star-date 3134.6. Our chronometers still run backward. When it started, we followed the radiations, all the way to the Rim of the Galaxy. We have found the planet-source of the radiation, but something else is happening…

(beat)

When we left Earth, each of the 450 crewmembers of the Enterprise was checked out stable. But locked in this ship for two years, they have experienced the stresses of time and space. We have continuous psych-probes, but we know some have been altered. There may even be those who have gone sour. We can never know till the flaw shows up. And by then, it’s too late…

Our OPENING SHOT has MOVED IN on the Enterprise THROUGH A DISSOLVE to a shot CLOSE on a small, isometrically-shaped metal container, as it is opened by hand. Kirk’s speech over is heard (after beat) as we HOLD CLOSE on the lid of the box, opening with tambour doors, so that the interior rises, and a strange dull light floods the frame. As the container opens, the black velvet interior slides up to reveal possibly half a dozen strange and wondrous glowing Jewels. Yet they are not jewels. They are the infamous and illegal Jillkan dream-narcotics, the Jewels of Sound. They are faceted solids, but not stone, more like a hardened jelly that burns pulsating with an inner light: gold, blue, crimson, orange.